Battle of the Prince's Pass
The Battle of the Prince's Pass was a major engagement during Robert's Rebellion and one of the largest battles to have been fought in the far south in that century. The battle started when Arthur Baratheon was commissioned by his nephew and liege lord Robert Baratheon, who was in open rebellion with the Iron Throne after Rhaegar Targaryen's abduction of Lyanna Stark. Arthur started a protracted hunt across Dorne and the Reach, hunting every single major stronghold in both regions for the Prince of Dragonstone. At the same time, King Aerys II Targaryen commissioned the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, Ser Gerold Hightower the White Bull, to destroy Arthur's army and end the hunt after his son. Gerold hunted after Arthur and the result was a massive battle across the Prince's Pass. Both armies dealt immense damage, but eventually Arthur prevailed and drove Gerold into hiding. The Prince's Pass would be one of the most historic battlegrounds of the war. Battle Prelude After the declaration of war by Lord Robert Baratheon, Arthur Baratheon was sent by his nephew to search for Lyanna Stark, who had been abducted by Prince Rhaegar Targaryen. He would have sent his brother Stannis, who was almost equivalent to Arthur in terms of savvy, but Stannis was made to hold Storm's End from the Tyrells, therefore Arthur was the only surviving Baratheon that Robert had and he was was already an incredibly experienced and proficient warrior and one of the greatest strategists in all of the Seven Kingdoms. Therefore when he finally embarked on the hunt, King Aerys Targaryen decided to deal with him immediately on account of the fact that they had fought alongside one another during the War of the Ninepenny Kings and Aerys, in spite of his madness, was at least slightly convinced of how dangerous Arthur was. With an enormous army of Stormlords, Arthur searched the Dornish Marches for the Stark girl, becoming increasingly more dangerous to the Martells because he showed more chivalry to the smallfolk during the hunt than the Targaryen loyalists did in their quarrel with Robert. Arthur visited every single keep, village, castle and fortress he came to, but he never once threatened the smallfolk. Mace Tyrell was convinced that he ought to go and deal with Arthur, but he risked being branded a family traitor because Arthur was married to his sister Jeyne; he was also constantly reminded publicly by his bannermen, especially Randyll Tarly, that he would destroy his own strategic position against Storm's End if he hunted after the White Stag. After visiting a series of keeps, Arthur found himself unable to find either Lyanna or Rhaegar, but he knew he would have to go deeper into Dorne to properly search for them. Doran Martell appealed to Aerys for help because he feared that, if it came to blows between Doran and Arthur, then Arthur would lay waste to Sunspear, and Prince Oberyn was elsewhere. However, Aerys was already making plans to destroy his old friend - he sent Gerold Hightower, the White Bull, to fight Arthur, declaring the White Bull and the White Stag can grapple in the sand until the dragons burn the black stags to cinders. Battle Finally, the White Bull and the White Stag met on the Prince's Pass and, for two nights, the armies held their ground, reluctant to fight yet - Arthur acknowledged that Gerold Hightower was actually the most dangerous fighter in all of the Reach, besides Randyll Tarly, and he also had Ser Jonothor Darry at his side, who was almost equally as dangerous as him. Finally, Arthur called for a parley with the Kingsguard, and Gerold wisely consents. With Calvin Dondarrion at his side as well as Axell Florent, while Gerold met him with Jonothor Darry and Harmen Uller. The parley took several hours, and it came to nothing because Arthur refused to bend the knee to Gerold, and Gerold refused to give away the location of either Prince Rhaegar or Lady Lyanna - ironically, both men were painfully aware that their adversary would give away the information that was wanted. At the end of the parley, Arthur offered to fight Gerold to the death, knowing that if he won that the army that was facing them would bend the knee or disperse into Dorne. They were interrupted when Prince Oberyn Nymeros Martell arrived with his van, giving the royalists an advantage in numbers and a great boost in morale. Seeing the Prince of Dorne arrive, Gerold refused Arthur's offer and declared that the battle would decide whether or not antlers defeated horns. Arthur rode back to the camp and decided that they would fight the army to the death. At the break of dawn, the two armies finally fought. Gerold sent his armies into the camp, but the camp consisted only of scarecrows and straw knights that Arthur had set up to trick the enemy. While the royalists were busy ransacking the camp, Arthur's army manoeuvred the Pass and shattered Gerold's camp, taking dozens of prisoners and erasing all of the food that was found. Oberyn escaped the attack, and summoned his sellsword company, only for Arthur to beat them back. However, Gerold Hightower's army returned with a vengeance and the Battle of the Prince's Pass broke out all across the Wide Way. Gerold Hightower and Arthur Baratheon were easily distinguishable on their horses with their respectively black and white armour, but they never met face-to-face ever again, even though they both tried extremely hard to come to blows. Oberyn Martell reportedly clashed with Axell Florent to a standstill, wounding him, before Calvin Dondarrion appeared with archers and drove him away. Calvin Dondarrion was noted to have fought with as much destructive power as a true lightning bolt. He reportedly crushed Jonothor Darry's vanguard with only thirty men, while Arthur himself injected his forces into the gap that was created as a result and Jonothor Darry surprised them all by slaughtering many of the main lieutenants that followed Arthur. However, the squires and pages and lesser knights (who were almost superior in numbers to their betters) rallied behind Arthur, who charged Ser Jonothor so brutally that he was driven into a river, where he vanished, killing Calvin's squires until he found a new horse to continue the battle. Arthur was unstoppable throughout the entire battle, wielding Iron Solace so fiercely that it was like a shimmering storm cloud surrounding his black armour. Arthur pursued Jonothor Darry across the Prince's Pass, before Gerold Hightower's revised vanguard, which he had amassed in less than half an hour, and Gerold protected his sworn brother like nothing Arthur had ever seen, losing his own horse in the process. Gerold lured Arthur into the ravine, where Arthur knows that the White Bull has archers waiting, so instead he encircles the ravine and clashed with the archers, leading to a stalemate that lasted until the night. Oberyn reappeared with his sellswords and attacked Arthur, and the two of them duelled. Oberyn, becoming one of the hardest opponents that Arthur had ever faced, held his own against the White Stag even though he was deprived of his spear and forced to use a sword. After Arthur broke his sword too, leaving a scar on Oberyn's unprotected left shoulder in the process, Oberyn continued to fight with a dagger and Arthur would have killed him, if Jonothor Darry hadn't saved his life. It is unknown exactly how Oberyn was saved by Darry, but it is known that he narrowly survived the fight. After the archers had been dispersed, Arthur returned to fighting the van of the White Bull, who charged full tilt into the royalist army and pushed Arthur back so far that he threatened to trap him in Kingsgrave, where a recuperating Oberyn Martell waited with a reserve army. However, Arthur's army returned fire on them and eventually won a famous victory at the Prince's Pass, which forced Gerold Hightower and Jonothor Darry to part ways and flee, with Gerold eventually returning to the Tower of Joy. Oberyn was eventually taken prisoner during the victory, but he was ransomed by Prince Doran and eventually returned to the war. Arthur spared all of the prisoners his army had taken at the start of the battle, or at least those who had survived the combat, and would later continue his hunt until he located the Tower of Joy as Rhaegar's location when Rhaegar finally resurfaced. Aftermath The Battle of the Prince's Pass as a whole was a decisive victory, but indecisive in that the main commanders weren't found by the rebels. Gerold Hightower and Jonothor Darry disappeared, but Harmen Uller was taken hostage until Oberyn Martell retreated, at which point Lord Uller was released. Arthur returned from Dorne to fight in the Battle of the Trident alongside his nephew and liege lord, but not before reporting the rumours about Lyanna's location to Storm's End and Winterfell - the raven that took the message to Storm's End was shot down by the Tyrells during the siege. The Prince's Pass would be one of the most decisive victories that Arthur had ever won and one of the best-known battles in the Rebellion. What transpired between the two commanders would commence the rumour that Arthur became the White Stag as a result of his battle with the White Bull, but this would be completely untrue since Arthur adopted the nickname long before the battle took place as a result of a cold joke between him and his brother Steffon. It earned him the title 'Champion of the Prince's Pass'. One of the most major repercussions of the combat was that it created extreme tension between the Martells and Arthur, but Doran brushed aside all of the emnity between them on the grounds that the Hightowers had been the main combatants in the battle and not the Martells, and Oberyn defied Doran's orders in entering the battle at all, nearly getting himself killed - it would be one of the few publicly-known occasions where Oberyn would accept his brother was in the right. Mace Tyrell proved incapable of claiming any true involvement in this battle, and couldn't list it as one of the victories he had accomplished as he had done Ashford - Robert Baratheon would privately joke that Arthur would want Mace to prove his words with steel if Mace ever bragged of any involvement.Category:Cossack09 Category:Robert's Rebellion Category:Under construction Category:Events